31 In his final opinion before resigning the bench in September 2001, Justice Michael Gillespie condemns the government’s disregard for the rule of law. He states: The executive has contrived to politicize the bench….manipulation of court rolls; selective prosecution; and packing of the Bench of the superior courts are techniques which provide a government determined to do so with the opportunity to subvert the law while at the same time appearing to respect its institutions.xli It is difficult to imagine that the judges hearing these petitions can have remained indifferent to all of these goings-on, nor can they have been indifferent to the threats made against them when they came to their decisions. It is axiomatic that justice requires that judges are free from political influence and manipulation, but, in Zimbabwe, we have seen direct threats against individual judges and generalised threats against the judiciary as a whole. What effects this has had upon the petitions can only be speculation, but it remains an important speculation. It will be interesting to see the outcome of the Supreme Court appeals for these cases, for all of the cases have been referred to the Supreme Court on appeal. Although the results of all of these petitions remain to be decided, it is clear that the results to a large extent validate the claims that the June 2000 General Election was violent. It is also clear that the courts in most cases accepted that the organised violence and torture was a significant problem for accepting that the elections were wholly free and fair, but there were decided differences in the interpretations of the Electoral Act. The goals behind the Petitions As indicated earlier, there were several goals behind these petitions (see page 3 above), and, to a large extent, these appear to have been met. One of the major goals, that the stories of the victims were heard by the nation, was mostly met, despite rather uneven and uninformed press coverage. This goal accords to the “right to know” in the principles outlined by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nationsxlii. In order to combat the effects of impunity, a number of rights must be affirmed according to the UN, and these include the following: (a) (b) (c) (d) The victims' right to know; The victims' right to justice; The victims' right to reparations; The right to non-recurrence. The right to know is not simply the right of any individual victim or closely related persons to know what happened, but is also a collective right, ensuring that history accurately records the violations to prevent them from recurring in the future. Its corollary is a “duty to remember”, which the State must assume in order to guard against the perversions of; the knowledge of the oppression it has lived through is part of a people's national heritage and as such must be preserved. The right to justice implies that all victims shall have the opportunity to assert their rights and receive a fair and effective remedy, ensuring that the perpetrators stand trial and that the victims obtain reparations. The right to justice entails obligations for the State: to investigate violations, to prosecute the perpetrators and, if their guilt is established, to punish them. Lastly, international xli Gillespie, J., The State v Tapfuma Humbarume and Ask Ndoro, p.5 See UN [1997], The Administration of Justice and the Human Rights of Detainees: Question of the impunity of perpetrators of humanrights violations (civil and political), Revised final report prepared by Mr. Joinet pursuant to SubCommission decision 1996/119, United Nations. Economic and Social Council. Commission on Human Rights. SubCommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/20/Rev.1 xlii AMANI TRUST: Neither Free nor Fair: High Court decisions on the petitions on the June 2000 General Election.